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Summary: "Where is the Gospel of Thomas?"
Review: I want to begin by observing that this book has been grossly mis-titled. I purchased this book in the hopes of finding the text of the Gospel of Thomas with scholarly commentary. I found neither. Instead, I found a meandering writing which began with the authors own personal experience of rediscovering church followed by random pieces of gnostic text, church history, commentary and personal reflection. I found this book to be neither scholarly nor spiritual. I would not recommend this to anyone seeking either. This book was a disappointment, and if it were possible to get a refund for "false advertising", I would pursue it.
Rating: 
Summary: Seekers Welcome Here
Review: Elaine Pagels is not a minister and not a theologian. She is an historian of religion at Princeton, whose ouvre since grad school at Harvard has been the "gnostic gospels," in particular the cache of texts and fragments found in a jar in Nag Hamadi Egypt in 1945. The jar had been buried somewhere around 360 A.D., most likely to preserve for the future a body of works that had been banned as heretical by the then-emergent orthodox Christian Church.Needless to say, defenders of orthodoxy have been less than thrilled by the prospect of having to defend themselves against what they must have believed was, quite literally, a dead letter. The sharp tones of offended orthodoxy are evident in many of the reviews of this book found on this site, but that's really their problem, not Pagels's. If you are seeking after a glimmer and a hint of an alternative Christian path, an alternative to what Catholicism and its spin-offs offer, this might be a good place to start. As an historian, Pagels takes a bold and risky step when she begins her book with a personal narrative of a parent's anguish at the prospective death of a child. It was this anxiety and anguish that led her into a church not as an academic analyst, but a customer, as it were. Still, she could not suspend her scholarly curiosity as the process of a faith reaffirmed unfolded. Some reviewers have made the outrageous charge that Pagels is anti-Christian. Having just put down the book, I find this charge ludicrous. It would be true only if "Christian" is defined as someone who accepts without question a particular interpretation of a particular text with no possibility of there being anything else ever. In any event, Pagels's personal journey takes up only a couple of pages of a good-sized work, the thrust of which is an examination of why the organized church selected a few of the many texts available as the sole authoritative texts for what would become the New Testamant. Most of this paring down, it turns out, was the work of one man, Iraneous, Bishop of Lyons, in the early second century. A survivor of widespread anti-Christian purges, Iraneous's mission was to try to unify the scattered Christian communities of the Mediterranian basin. Presumably, the idea was that there would be strength in numbers, and more particularly there would be more strength among the Christians if their tendency to argue with eachother and form splinter movements were curtailed. To this end it would be greatly advantageous if the authorities on which they based their disagreements were narrowed to a few--hence the need to select what amounted to a "best of" album of early Christian writings. From a doctrinal standpoint, Iraneous selected the Book of John as the most important of the gospels, and placed it first in front of Mathew, Mark and Luke. Iraneus's belief in the authority of John, and the take on Jesus it encompasses, has been the basis of orthodox belief ever since. Most particularly, it is the idea found in John--and no where else in the Bible--Jesus the man was none other than God Himself. With Jesus as the sole earthly instance of the divine, access to the divine can be had only through faith in Jesus, and by extention, the church that holds that view. It is this core belief that became embodied in the Nicean creed and all subsequent Chrisitan orthodoxy, but as Pagels points out, it was certainly not the view of the majority of Christians who were contemporary with Iraneus. Most clearly in opposition to the Jesus-is-God view (a view that both traditional Jews and many if not most early Christians would have found blasphemous) was the so-called book of Thomas. Thomas purports to lay out sayings of Jesus, sayings that taken together stand for the idea that Jesus was an exemplar of God, but not God Himself. Moreover, the individual can access the divine through deep reflection and Christian community rituals. Unspoken here is the critical question: So who needs an organized church? True, in many of Pagels's quotes from Iraneus,the man comes across as a pompous prig who purports to speak for the common man. He also seems to have had a tough time seeing women who had had spiritual awakenings through gnostic ceremonies as anything other than "that stupid woman" etc. He also justifies his choice of there being only four "true" gospels on the basis of there being only four winds. Quid est demonstrandum. However, Pagels also reveals him to be a man of extraordinary bravery, patience and tenacity. That the hideous sufferings inflicted on the early Chritians by the Romans would, a few generations later, be inflicted on "heretic" Christians by orthodox Christians can not be laid at Iraneus's door. That kind of viciousness flows from orthodoxy itself, not the things that people are orthodox about. What I found somewhat disappointing was not that Pagels tends to hang Iraneous with his own words so much as her failure to hang him high enough. More particularly, I wanted to read a lot more about Thomas (or at least, what's in Thomas), and the book would have benefitted greatly from having the whole Thomas work included as an appendix. Instead, she kind of meanders off in her lucid and erudite way into discussions with progressively less punch, as informative as they are. While Pagels suggests that it was doctrine alone that kept Thomas out of the New Testament--particularly the idea of finding the divine within--I think there was a rather more obvious reason. The other gospels are narratives of the life of Jesus--Thomas is simply a group of sayings with no story, no structure, no life of Jesus to tell to the converts. As such, it could only serve to raise uncomfortable questions, the last thing the early church founders wanted. I was also disappointed that Prof. Pagels did not put more time into the question of John's historicity. Although Iraneus believed that John was written by Jesus' actual disciple John, I think a good case can be made that John's author lived at least a generation later. Yet Pagels never picked up that particular gauntlet. In sum, I'd give this book a B+ on the scale of fulfilling the promise of the jacket copy. It earns an A for what it has done to refresh me on my own spiritual journey.
Rating: 
Summary: A Great Book - Believe it or Not!
Review: This book gets a five star rating for several reasons: Elaine Pagels writes clearly, concisely and for a popular audience in this book. You'll want to keep reading and I never got "bogged down" at any point. Secondly, she introduces several personal faith-related stories which, for me, make this a much more touching book. Sometimes we wonder about the religious leanings of a certain author as we read their material - Pagels reveals to me a deep spiritual faith and love of the Christian tradition if not a love for Christian orthodoxy. Thirdly, Pagels tries very hard to get people to think "outside the box" regarding Jesus and Christianity - this is a difficult (but necessary, in my opinion) trajectory which requires courage and will ALWAYS draw attacks from conservative Christians. In a recent internet discussion, I was told by certain fundamentalist true-believing "Christians" that I could never claim to be a Christian if I didn't believe in ALL of the orthodox creedal material. Pagels shows us that a great many early Christians considered themselves to be true followers of Jesus without holding any or all of what became to be "orthodox beliefs". The diversity of early Christianity tells us much of relevance for our faith journeys in the pluralistic world of the 21st century. Finally, as the title implies, Pagels argues that there is much more to the Christian path of faith than "belief". As Mark Twain once said: "Religion is about believing things you know ain't true!". Or as the Queen in Alice in Wonderland says: "Oh, I can believe 12 impossible things before breakfast!". [Both quotations paraphrased - too lazy to look them up!]. There are a great many people in the modern world who would be Christians but cannot "believe" the things necessary to be orthodox Christians. Pagels gives us a glimpse into an early Christian past which pre-dates the orthodox creeds and tells of different ways in which people understood Jesus and God. There is much of value in the Gospel of Thomas, for example, which can be relevant to our faith journeys today. Just as I cannot accept all of the orthodox creeds and beliefs, neither do I feel obligated to embrace all Gnostic ideas in order to see wisdom in the Gospel of Thomas. I feel no need, as the Church Fathers did and orthodox believers today do, to proclaim my faith understanding as unique and perfect for everyone. Pagels, by challenging the Gospel of John as the only true understanding of the Christian message, does us a great service in our modern pluralistic age. One CAN be Christian without being a Christian exclusivist - let's let God decide that particular issue. Judge not - lest ye be judged!
Rating: 
Summary: Pagel's Pays the Mortgage.
Review: This work By Dr Pagels contains no new information and should be called Pagel's repeats. I have read Adam,Eve and the Serpant, the Origin of Sin and the Gnostic Gospels and enjoyed them all but this latest book is just a tiresome rehashing of what she has written before. There is very little in the book about the gospel of Thomas and no new insights into gnosticism that she has not written before.
This book reminds me of a greatest hits albumn released because the band needs to pay the mortgage. Nothing new or interesting.
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Summary: Shoddy scholarship
Review: There has been quite a vogue for Irenaeus-bashing in the last several years. He was the second-century bishop who spearheaded the movement to limit the canon of gospels to the four we now include in the New Testament, and one of the pricipal targets of Pagels's ire. She states that Irenaeus's efforts to establish a unified church were anti-creativity and anti-originality, which rather misses the point. Were the Gospels intended as exercises in artistic fulfillment, or as ways to show seekers the path to God through story? The idea was to provide a means for communicating what the writers presumably saw as critical truths, not to allow them a forum for exercising their originality. Pagels makes any number of totally unsupported statements and conclusions throughout this somewhat rambling book, and then goes on to treat them as fact. For example, she asserts that the depiction of Thomas as "doubting" was a clever plot on the part of Irenaeus's orthodox party to discredit Thomas. Huh? If that is the case, why is the Catholic Church (which has a pretty heavy stake in orthodoxy) in the habit of referring to him as Saint Thomas, and naming churches after him? It is poor scholarship to make such an assertion with absolutely no facts to back it up. I am also rather taken aback by her very close-minded ideas of what other contemporary Christians believe. She states flatly that "most" New Testament scholars now believe that the whole Nativity story was made up as a kind of retrofitted history, attempting to make the story of Jesus fit with prophecy. Maybe that is what scholars with offices next to hers believe, but there are a lot of scholars outside her narrow world who don't agree. Another example: she repeatedly implies that the difference between the order of events in the gospel of John and the order in the synoptic gospels is proof that John is fabricated. Actually, if Pagels were to read two current news accounts of the same event put out by two different news agancies, ahe might realize that differences in the order of events as recounted are not exactly proof of anything. The worst aspect of the book, though, is the way Pagels twists the writings of the Gnostics to suit her agenda. The Gnostics were devoted to the idea that the truth is only revealed to a select few, that matter (including flesh and the childbirth that engenders flesh) is a burden that keeps the select from full realization, and that there exists a rather bizarre heavenly hierarchy of emanations and spirits, in which (among other things) the God of the Old Testament is a twisted and evil mistake. These core ideas of Gnosticism are conveniently left out or only hinted at. I suspect that the idea of gaining access to "secret" writings and doctrines was--and is--very appealing to certain mentalities, and there does seem to be a fashion every so often for that kind of thing (for example, the late nineteenth century proliferation of organizations with secret initiations, including most of the fraternities currently on American campuses). A number of New Age ideas, such as the so-called "ascended masters," also seem to be examples of this phenomenon. Ultimately such secret groups, promising a special level of enlightenment or prestige to the chosen few, are elitist and utterly antithetical to the very heart of Christianity. As I continued reading this book, I found myself growing more and more appreciative of Irenaeus. I can't help but wonder--if the New Testament had allowed all the peculiar documents floating around in the first centuries after Christ to become part of the canon, as Pagels seems to wish had happened, would Christianity even still exist? Given the content of many of those early Gnostic writings, it seems highly likely that it would have gone the way of the cult of Cybele.
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Summary: New Perspectives
Review: This book gave me a tremendous new perspective on my personal faith, very much like Clint Arthur's "New Free Sex" DVD gave me a fresh conception of intimacy and loving between man and woman. The main difference for me was that "Beyond Belief" presented much more of a threat to my religious convictions.
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Summary: I finally understand
Review: This book is a courageous and brilliant piece of work. I finally understand why I sometimes feel that Christianity has taken a turn that took it from its original spirit. I know that these theories will be difficult for those who see Christ as the only way and as John has portrayed him in his gospel but I think it is healthy to see that we all have the spirit of light and that we can and must bring out the he artfulness that is the essence of all human practice. This is threatening to those who wish to see only one way as the path, but I see this as opening Christian practice to a new level of individual responsibility that is the core of all religions. This is the core of the teaching of all the religious traditions. This might be the most important book of the milenium Thank you. Thak you
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Summary: Bad news for those with the faith of a child.
Review: For those who decry the triumph of the early church over pure gnosticism & Roman paganism, Pagels is your apple. Her scholarship is excellent. Of course, none of the "gospel" books were written by eyewitnesses, & The Thomas gospel is essentially a collection of purported sayings of Jesus from the early oral traditions. The loss of the Christian oral tradition was indeed unfortunate, as it resulted in the patriarchal silencing of the Church's influential female voices. But we cannot say that these voices were primarily gnostic; that is a separate issue. The most serious flaw in gnostic belief was not in making Jesus first among, or equal to, many spiritual lights, but in denying his humanity; that since Jesus was perfect & no human could be perfect, therefore Jesus was not human. This heretical mixture of neo-platonism & Eastern mystery cult turned the image of Jesus into a funhouse mirror reflection, making him, & therefore God, inaccessible to the common person. Certainly a most attractive proposition for intellectuals & spiritual seekers with the literacy, leisure & curiosity to browse & shop at the Supermarket of Religions. But not so good when one wants to bring people out of the chains of superstition; the religions of stonings, ritual puberty clitoral & penile circumcision, foot-binding, the seraglo & temple prostitution, shroudings, shunnings, blood sacrifices, murders-for-martyrdom, & the tyranny of priestly castes. Had it not been for those wise, devout, fearless & savvy people who brought together the Canon we know as the Bible, Christianity would have broken up early on into hundreds of theologically weak, vulnerable, small, contending esoteric sects, each promoting a particular "secret wisdom" rather than the open, welcoming gospel of Jesus; who if he had any "secrets" kept them to himself rather than making them criteria for knowing God, & who asks only for the trusting faith of a child. That disunity would have guaranteed the failure of the Gospel mission. God did not allow it to happen. I wouldn't mind if a few more books, like the fanciful Revelation to John of Patmos, James' attack on justification by faith, & Timothy's biases against women, were consigned to an appendix. In the present era, rampant sectarianism, crude American pop culture, & the flag-waving worship of granite war jehovahs are doing a fine job of ripping the Christian church - as well as other world faiths - apart, to which Pagels only provides another crowbar & sledge hammer. Bob Rixon
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Summary: Don't buy Pop Religion
Review: Its quite simple really. If you compare John and Thomas, you get differences. John is the "Philosopher's Gospel", Thomas, the magicians. Before you start accepting this, read about the Gnostics, Manicheans and Marcions in a historical light, see all the things they didn't understand about Christianity, then read this and realize where it all went wrong. You might as well read the Apocryphal Acts of Paul and Peter while you're at it, they're sorta similar... the part where Peter starts flying is great.
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Summary: Give me that Ol' Time Herecy
Review: It is a shame that people have to try to re-animate old, long discarded heresy. Seems to happen every few generations or so. Just as the old Arian Heresy (originally from around 100 CE) has been most recently 'resurrected' by the Jehovah's Witnesses, so the so-called 'Gospel' or Thomas, a document that was not even written contemporarily to Christ, is once again being brought forward as something new, secret and somehow worthy of our attention. Any 1st year Bible College student, or most members of the better Adult Sunday Schools, could easily rebut most or Ms. Pagel's points. The problem is that most of her readers will be extremely ignorant of actual scriptral studies, much less ever even read the Bible all the way through. The 'Gospel' or Thomas was an attempt to co-opt the respectability of Jesus in order to forward the Gnostic Heresy. Gnosticism is especially attractive today because it allows it's adherants to a) Reject some of the long established truths of Christianity, which happen to be so inconvenient today (obedience to G-d's Law and Commands, objective truth and morality, non-relative ethics). One has only to read the Cannonical (widely accepted by the people of the Body, not imposed by some Star Chamber of Bishops) Gospels, the Pauline letters and the Old Testament to see the totall difference between them and the heretical work. There appears to be 'one born every minute', al least since about 300 CE.
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